Girl Meets Maya's Past, Present, Future
by victori-yesplz
Summary: Cyd and Shelby jump back to a time they wish they could change only to realize it wasn't their own that they were trying to fix. Together they realize that changing the past comes with consequences, and they work together to help Maya Hart realize that changing her past doesn't always guarantee a better future.
1. Chapter 1

"What do you want your legacy to be?" Cory reiterated for the fifth time that week, leading up to the girl's graduation from middle school.

Riley glared to Maya who was vacantly staring into the wall, mindlessly swirling her hair around her finger, her feet propped on the desk with no concern for the fact that Cory had been directing the question specifically towards her despite talking to the entire class.

"Maya?" Lucas peered over, breathing over her neck, and Maya snaps back, her eyes red as if she had been crying, and her face flushed as if she were sick.

"I'm fine Lucas." She quickly replies, unaware that he hadn't asked a question, and jumped right to the conclusion that he had been asking her that.

The bell rings, signifying the release from their class, leaving the one question Cory had wanted to stay with the children throughout their lives unanswered intentionally, wanting them to discover on their own what it would mean.

"Maya, what's happening?" Riley fast walks, catching up to the short-legged girl walking furiously through the crowd of students.

She turns around, her face hot and red, darting her eyes from her best friends as Riley takes Maya's hands in hers, squeezing her hands around Maya's in a fist.

"Riley, what legacy do I have left to leave? I've done nothing but set myself up for failure; My entire life I've been set up as such."

Riley was taken aback by her friend's negativity, Maya's usual attitude nothing new, but the fact that she was finally admitting this was how she felt was surprising. She hadn't expected that to be the thing truly bothering her about leaving middle school, both girls more focused on making sure they'd stay together in the years to come.

"Maya, how couldn't you tell me this is how you felt? My dad's been trying to teach us all year that we all have something to offer; We've had all year to prepare us."

"Riley, you can't decide what you're going to do with your life overnight. Think about it; If my dad hadn't left, if your dad or Sean wasn't my father figure, who would I be?"

"You're Maya and that's all you're supposed to be, a creation made from God's powerful mind! Your dad doesn't define you and has nothing to do with who you are. Or maybe he made you tougher: Which explains why you hide your feelings?" Riley realizes.

Maya walks towards her locker, spinning the dial with her numerical code, lifting the handle and thrusting it open, ignoring Riley as she buries her head in her locker, trying to appear as if she was searching for something in order to hide her fears.

"Riley, we can't redo our past and can't see into our future. I'm literally an empty tin can that's been crushed by the weight of the world." Maya somberly whispers.

"And do you know what happens to tin after it's crushed and recycled? It's made into something new and amazing, that can be used for all sorts of new purposes!"

"But I'm not glass or tin or recyclable material, i'm ceramic; Fragile yet hard to see through." Maya retorts.

Maya slams her locker, hearing Cory exclaim in surprise and frustration from the other side of the wall as Maya predicted that his chalkboard had just burst into a cloud of chalky white powder, coating an angry Cory from his room any second.

"We can't undo this year Riley; Let it go." She adds before storming off.

* * *

"Hey Cyd, if we could redo this entire year, what would you change?" Shelby looks over, watching as Cyd hung off the edge of her bed, her hair sweeping the floor.

"Naldo's underwear. He hasn't done that since Halloween when he had that accident at the haunted house." She laughs to Shelby's disapproval.

"Cyd i'm serious! This english paper is due friday and I have no idea where to start!"

Cyd jumps from the bed and slides over on Shelby's, looking at her like it was all too obvious.

"Shelbs, we're time travelers! We can go back and pick any moment to relive!"

"Are you sure we should mess with the past? Barry's warned us about the butterscotch effect and we don't want to relive Naldo and Barry's 'Rockstar days, do we?"

"So, we'll jump back and just relive it as it was, we don't have to change, just figure what we would if we could." Cyd insists, pulling at Shelby's arms with big eyes.

Shelby sighs, setting down her notebook and pencil and looking excitedly at Cyd, opening her arms and leaning in as the two hug, quickly disappearing into a yellow flash and within a blink of an eye, find themselves in the past, just not the one they had imagined.

Surrounding them is a street of busy cars, bright city lights illuminating the neighborhood they appeared in, and children with thick, long antennas on their phones playing with skip-its along the block outside the brown bricked, apartments lining the road.

"Cyd, this isn't our past." Shelby nervously exclaims, looking around.

"Then whose is it?" Her voice wavers, watching as a little girl pushes her way past her and begins to climb the fire escape towering the wall.


	2. Girl Meets a Time to Save her Future

Six year old Maya Hart follows her ears, a little girl who tended to listen and think with her heart more than her head, and appears on the upper floor of the fire escape, the sound getting more distinct and louder until she follows it to a large window, looking inside the opened frame and finding a skinny and long brown haired girl swaying as she sung to herself in the window, seemingly alone.

"Hey- you're the sound i've been following." Maya exclaims, folding her body so that she could climb through the opened window.

"Are you a stranger?" A startled Riley implies, keeping her calm as the strange blonde inches closer.

"Yeah, I guess."

"Are you a stranger coming through my window?" Riley asks again.

"Yeah, I guess I am." She responds amused, and with a tumultuous thud, she kicks her small heels of her shoes obnoxiously against the wooden bench of the window.

Riley surveys the blonde, looking her up and down with an amused yet fluctuant stare, not sure what to make of her, if she should scream or if she was just an innocent wander, the typical kid who would willingly make friends with anyone who had a heartbeat.

"Ahhhh!" Riley cautiously begins to scream before she feels Maya's cold hand clap over her mouth.

Cyd grins, quietly motioning Shelby up the ladder where just moments before they had been following the little girl out of curiousity up the stairs despite Shelby insisting that they had to jump back before destroying someone else's past and then future. But Cyd, drawn to the blonde's spunky attitude that reminded her of herself in kindergarten dragged Shelby up the escape where they were now watching the girls exchange awkward yet seemingly natural dialog between them.

"Shelby, this is- or at least was us." Cyd quietly yet excitedly infers.

"Shhh!" Shelby snaps, suddenly fascinated with the girls who had literally just met but under a random bystanders assumption, would be marked as life long friends.

"Please don't! The singing is so nice compared to the yelling between my mommy and dad at home. The singing brings back happy memories of when mommy used to sing to me." Maya sighs, looking down as Riley reached for her hands, consoling the child she barely knew.

Cyd and Shelby looked lovingly in awe at the two young girls, marveling at how easily two little kids could get together, forming a quick friendship just as they had bonded over a sandwich in kindergarten. Suddenly a male voice echos through a baby monitor on the table and the girls jump.

"Riley? What's going on honey?" Cory calls through the monitor.

As Riley begins to answer, Maya jumps in. "Just talking to myself….Lalalalala!" Maya repeats in a singsong voice, unconvincing to Riley but decent enough for Cory to let it fly.

"I feel guilty." Riley exclaims as she begins to get up.

"Boy, am I ever gonna be good for you; I'm Maya Penelope Hart." Maya smirks, proudly introducing herself.

As the moment dissipates from their eyes, Cyd and Shelby look sadly at each other, realizing what they must do, the reason they were thrown back from their time to help someone from another.

"Shelbs," Cyd begins sympathetically.

"Cyd, I know she's not the happiest little girl, but at least she has a friend that's there to support her. She's gonna be fine, and messing with her parents is only going to risk messing up her future further." Shelby warns.

"Why don't we see what she's like now?" Cyd infers, nagging Shelby by pulling at her arm, trying to secretly jump jack her while she least expected it, but Shelby refused to nudge, standing her ground as she waited for the memory to complete vanish.

* * *

 **XXX**

"Cyd, we're back at the haunted house, but why?" Shelby observes upon flashing into the past.

Riley and Maya sat against the base of an old, saggy oak tree off the side of the house, oblivious to the fact that Shelby and Cyd were intently watching them with curiosity to why they were thrown back to this timeline despite wanting to head to the future. They knew that this was the future from the point they were in before, but how did it connect to the little girl's timeline they were in before?

"Shelbs, that's Riley! We've met her before in a previous timeline! Do you think this was her timeline we've jumped into?" Cyd exclaims.

"But the blonde...what's she got to do with it? Besides, we're not technically a part of her timeline, so how'd we get here in the first place?" Shelby notes.

"We're a small part of her history because we were here. And maybe we're trying to fix something about Riley's past and not our own! We're here to help her and the blonde somehow." Cyd infers.

"Time travel's so complicated." Shelby groans as Cyd takes her by the arm and begins to dart towards the girls.

"Cyd wait! We risk changing our own future if we meet her this way! We have to make sure we're stuck in the haunted house again with her and that other guy, Lucas?"

As Cyd slows her steps, she watches Riley lift her head and smile enthusiastically towards the girls, pointing the blonde in their direction and explaining what this was about. Her eyes were somber, blue and sad, watering like an ocean but as distant as the blue sky.

"Hey Shelby, hey Cyd!" Riley greets them as if they were old buddies, taking the girls by surprise.

"You remember us?" Cyd mumbles in surprise as Shelby nudges her with her elbow.

"Of course we do Cyd, we're the ones who were trapped together in the haunted house uh… just minutes ago, right?"

After mumbling a small "Of course," Cyd turns towards the haunted house, sticking her hands in the back of her jeans and awkwardly rocking on her heels, drawing a deep breath in as she ponders her mind for small talk in order to pass the moment.

"Where's Lucas?" Shelby asks, Cyd take back by how chipper and chatty Shelby was before realizing that she too was just nervous. One wrong move and their future was changed.

"That's what Maya wants to know." Riley turns around and smirks at Maya, gently teasing her.

They all glance to Maya, sitting under the tree, nervously picking at her split ends with angst in her eyes, obviously hiding something but her personality too stubborn and big for her to admit it. They slowly approach her, Shelby on her left and Riley on her right, Cyd sitting cross-legged in front of her to make room for herself.

"Maya, these are my friends, Cyd and Shelby." Riley introduces them as they wave according to their names'.

Maya offers a small yet sorrowful wave back, years of hurt and secrets behind them but Shelby only smiles then turns to Cyd, nudging for her to make the next move.

"Maya, how come you didn't come with us? Were you too afraid?" Cyd teases lightheartedly, and Riley shakes her head.

"We're in the middle of a 'Love Triangle' right now, and she's trying to act like she's not bitter about the whole haunted house experience."

"I'm not upset about that." Maya quickly snaps in defense, obviously trying to hide a lot more than she could.

"Then what are you upset about, Peaches?" Riley infers, going back to her old ways of always having to make things right.

Maya smiles at Riley, locking together their hands' and then turns her body, facing towards the girls, nervously watching the two exchange looks before deciding to search for the 'bigger' answers. Cyd and Shelby knew they had to ask the right questions, not only their future at stake but Riley and Maya's as well, but how could they sort things out if they didn't even know why or how they jumped to this past anyways.

"You know Maya," Shelby begins, trying to coax her towards her with an arm, "Sometimes in life you regret the things you chose not to do, and I'm thinking you wish you were in that haunted house with Lucas's arm around your shoulder." She winks before Maya begins to hesitantly pull away.

"Maya, this is just the beginning. If you spend all your time being bitter about something you could've done, you'll have no room to make for all the fun things you're going to do." Riley jumps in, smiling at Maya and pulling her away from Shelby's hold.

"Yeah, it's not like time travel's been invented yet, or something." Cyd infers, hinting to Shelby by nudging her in the ribs and Shelby frowns, burning her look that quieted her instantly, realizing the mistake she had made.

"This isn't about the haunted house! It's the fact that my whole life has been like this. It's like, you get attached to someone and then they just leave, or they find someone and you become the third wheel, and I can't put our friendship at stake, no matter how bad I want Lucas to make up his mind."

"The future's always gonna be unknown Maya, and some people find that to be scary, but God's got a plan for your life already, and he know's what a strong girl you are. Nothing's worth going back to change when it's done. And looking around, I don't see how you'd want to because if your mom and dad hadn't been fighting, I don't know that you would have ever climbed through my window for shelter."

Maya sighs, stands and stretches then slides back down the base of the tree, bringing her knees to her chest, the hot tears that were streaming down her cheeks pressed against her jeans becoming damp and she feels a hand on her back, and the eyes of three watching her. Her cheeks become flushed, slightly embarrassed at her explosion of emotions.

It was then that Cyd and Shelby felt something click, realizing that they solution to her problems were in their fingertips, the power of time travel feeling more useful, almost feeling as if it had become a superpower.

Maya was that girl they saw in the window, and this was Maya's past, not their own. They together had to figure out how to become apart of this timeline and jump throughout Maya's life and show her what effects time travel and the 'Butterfly effect' could have on things.

"Shelbs," Cyd exclaims as she pulls her to the side. "We need to show her that changing your past doesn't always guarantee a better future."

"But Cyd, she can't time travel."

"It doesn't mean that there isn't a way. We need to jump to our present day and take Janet Smythe's tachyometer to give the girls the ability to remember everything so she realizes what's been changed isn't always what you hope for." Cyd replies boldly, proud that for once she could feel like the genius of the two.

They girls look to Riley and Maya who were absorbed in their own conversation, clearly to oblivious to the other girls and Cyd and Shelby exchange smiles, slapping their hands together as they feel a soft and yellow glow surrounding them.


	3. Girl Meets her Father Figure

**Authors note: Hey guys! I'm sorry for the very long hiatus from this story, as I have been working on lots of other things, and struggling to finish my final year of schooling. Along with struggling with mental health issues, (Which I very seldom like to discuss) I've found that writing is an outlet for me, especially connecting with a character like Maya, who I've decided has some backstories of her own. Thank you to everyone who reviewed, and without further ado, a short update. P.S i'm definitely going to try to update once a week as long as people keep reading. I'm hoping through writing I can express my feelings and hopefully reach out to others in following chapters :) (I literally made the decision to discuss this in chapters and I write this)**

 **-xxx-**

"So we're supposed to figure out why we're following a timeline through Maya's past, and help her? Man, this time traveling thing is weird." Cyd mutters.

She knew she was clearly being unhelpful to Shelby, searching for the tachyometer that they had stolen from Janet after she disappeared to prison.

"I just need to know _why_ our powers are taking us back to Maya to help her. We've jumped through our timelines up until now, but I never thought we would end up helping others." Shelby adds.

Shelby digs through her big wooden chest by her bed, finding the small item and holding it above her head as if she had just found gold. She sighed with relief before walking back to Cyd, only to find that she wasn't in the room.

Cyd sat at the counter, Shelby's laptop resting on their granite countertop faced open, Cyd's face melted into the screen with full attention, simultaneously and rapidly writing down on a sheet of paper like she was a secretary.

"Shelbs, look at this!" She motions her towards the counter, "This instagram is Maya's! We could jump to these times with them and live them out! These could help us solve why we're here."

"But we can't travel with other people and only a few of these are flashback pics!" Shelby insist.

"Shoot!" Cyd paces, hands on chin.

She suddenly stops in her tracks, looking to Shelby mischievously.

"We did have the power to possess their bodies in that timeline! All we need to do is not leave the haunted house when we did. We need to stay with Riley and Lucas."

"But we won't take them with us, remember? We got out of their bodies by jumping. For now the tachyometer should be enough until we can figure out how to take them with us. They'll remember that we're jumping around, and we can go back to them and report what we find." Shelby assures her, feeling as if she had a new calling as an FBI agent or detective or something.

"Can't Barry help us with something?"

"We've got to talk to Riley and Maya first. We're meant to have met them in this moment at the haunted house a second time. We're supposed to change something or help her, but we don't know what yet."

Upon agreeing, Cyd and Shelby jump back to just a few minutes before, looking for Riley in order to get background on Maya. They knew changing the future could be dangerous for both them and Riley and Maya, but nevertheless they had to show Maya her life wouldn't be all so great any other way, and that somethings were meant to be the way they were.

"I've got daddy issues. And all I want is to see it for myself, not that will change anything." Maya explains bitterly, looking to Shelby taking notes.

"Well, we've brought a tachyometer, and anything we change in the past, you'll realize has changed in the future." Shelby looks up from her notes, looking seriously to the two younger girls. "We're going to show Maya that changing the past doesn't always guarantee a better or safer future."

"And we'll be back after each jump to fill you in until we can figure out how to take you with us. For now, this is the next best thing." Cyd adds.

Maya looks nervously to Riley before Riley rests her hand on top of Maya's, feeling tension leave their bodies, understanding Maya's hesitance towards them showing her that she does have a legacy. Maya didn't know what she had to leave or even offer John Quincy middle school through her three years there, but the Shelby and Cyd were there to show her that even if her dad hadn't left, she would still have a God given purpose to give, a lesson and experiences to leave and tell the incoming middle schoolers.

"Riley, I don't know…" Her voice wavers, slightly annoyed still.

"Do you trust me, Peaches?" Riley asks and Maya nods.

Shelby and Cyd open Instagram on their phones, scrolling down and picking a picture for Mother's day, six years ago:

" _My mother is one of the most hardworking, selfless persons'_ _I know. Not only is she my mother, but my mentor and my friend. Here's a pic to our very first mother's day together, just three generations of Harts."_

The picture showed a young Maya Hart in light blue, worn away footie pajamas, sitting on Katy's lap on the old tattered couch of her grandmother's home, her eyes barely able to keep open. The orange wall paper behind them was old and peeling, clearly water damaged and the blinds on her windows were so dusty, not even a deep dusting could make it easy to distinguish what color they had originally been.

Katy looked aged, lines around her soft eyes and her blonde hair tied up in a bun, drooping down and clearly she had just been at work, covered up to her elbows in syrup and jam staining her shirt right below her nametag. Little did Cyd and Shelby know what really happened that day, that Katy had worked a double, and rushed home just minutes before midnight.

Cyd and Shelby look to each other, slapping hands before expecting to find that they had jumped to the moment, real and right before their eyes. This was it; Expecting a look into the true Maya Hart's past. But they hadn't been sent there, but a stranger, older, place filled with stranger dressed pre-teens. Little did they know, it was the '90s.


End file.
